On Saturday the 29th December at 5.30pm I will be holding a vigil for the Delhi gang rape victim outside the Indian High Commission in Central London. The reason I am doing this is first and foremost to remember a poor young woman who spent a Saturday evening watching a movie with a friend, caught a bus home and then was gang raped on the bus. She died in the last few hours. As far as I know her identity has not been released. I don't know her name. But I don't need to know her name because the violence ...

Justin Richards seems to be on form these days; this is another tie-in e-book, intended as a prequel to The Snowmen (though as far as I could tell it was not available outside UKania until after the broadcast), a tale of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax battling a smoke monster with the assistance of a small boy as viewpoint character. It is a pastiche of Victorian children's stories with a nod to Leon Garfield (though his Devil-in-the-Fog was set a hundred years earlier), spooky and enjoyable. When we first met Vastra and Jenny, fandom cried out en masse for spinoff ...

Most of this is excellent, a tale of a specialist assassin who happens also to have a milder form of hæmophilia, trying to find out who organised his latest hit, and of a private detective hired to find and kill him for a previous assignment. The detail of pursuit around the UK and USA, getting entangled in a nasty cult with links to spooky circles in Washington, is very good. But unfortunately I was completely unconvinced by the twist-in-the-tale resolutions of both main plot strands, which spoiled what was otherwise a very enjoyable read. (Not a Rebus book, despite my ...

This proposal from the Chinese Government is an interesting aspect of family law that probably does not exist in any democracy. "China has passed a law requiring adult children to visit their elderly parents regularly or risk being sued. The law does not specify how frequently such visits should occur, but warns that neglect could risk court action."

A few of you may have had the delight of reading a post I made at 1:30 a few days ago, which I swiftly removed because I was in the midst of a mixture of physical and mental health problems (neither of which too serious, but more severe than I have experienced in a while). It was

With the news that Gerry Anderson died earlier this week I guess there was only one song that would fit. So here are Fuzz box with their strangely Barberella style International rescue: Sadly guitarist Jo Dunne died in October of cancer.

So my new phone will be arriving soon, and I will be wanting to do lots of playing with it. The thing is, I'm a little bit late to the Android party, and the ecosystem of Apps is HUGE. So what I want is for you to recommend me an app. Not loads of apps. Just one per comment, the one app you use every day and couldn't cope without. And then tell me why you think it is essential. Also if you have any tips for powersaving or other such useful hints, they will be gratefully recieved. Phone is ...

Looks like I was wrong last week, as there are some applications this week. Thanks to the admin team for getting these processed and ready. 122266: Demolition of warehouse and erection of electricity sub-station. High Street (part of Williams and Griffin redevelopment) 122267: Conservation area consent for 122266. 122147: Change of use from A3 (food and drink) to A5 (hot food takeaway), Middleborough. 122257: Listed building consent for additional window, Middle Mill Road. Please note that I am a member of the Council's Planning Committee for this municipal year. This means that I'm required to act in a 'quasi-judicial' manner ...

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 500 party members have responded, and we're publishing the full results. The Lib Dem half of the Quad top our members' poll for the worst 2012 [IMG: Nick Clegg yay2 - Some rights reserved by Liberal Democrats] LDV asked: In your opinion, which Lib Dem government minister has had the worst year? Unusually for our Voice surveys, this question allowed an unprompted, free-text response, which c.400 of our respondents filled in. ...

This opinion is from Sean Davey, and has also been posted at LibDemVoice. With nominations closing on January 4th, Liberal Youth will be electing a new Chair, and several new members of the Exec team leading it forward in 2013. Thanks to the hard work and diligence of Acting Chair Harry Matthews these elections (and ...

My friend Nick Campbell recently interviewed me for his book blog, A Pile of Leaves. The whole chat's in his imaginary garden, including what I think of eBooks, librarian's perks, and how I was always a Fattypuff even when technically a Thinifer. But, being me, my answers went on a bit, so Nick edited down several of them, and there's one that I've decided to publish in full here. Nick asked me: Do you think Doctor Who is the gay man's delight it once was? And do you have your own theory on why it was in the first place? ...

Here is Nick's New Year message: You can read the full text at the party's website here, including his resolutions for 2013: So I want you to hear it from me, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, that this Coalition Government is not going to lurch one way or the next. We will stay the course on the deficit. We will cut income tax bills and help with childcare bills. We will invest in boosting jobs and we'll reform welfare to get people into work. A stronger economy. A fairer society. Where everyone can get on. That's what we're about. ...

This is a rather long post (nearly 1,800 words) and I'm fully aware that it will break (by some margin) the tl;dr(*) threshold of many people! But I've written it for me, primarily to remind me of some of the material that I suspect may come in useful if I ever do take up my deferred place on Leicester University's occupational psychology MSc. A few weeks ago, I'd put together half a blog post on the topic of personality but had left it unfinished, gathering dust in my WordPress "drafts" folder. What finally prompted me into finishing it was a ...

[IMG: Progettazione] One of the Coalition government's first acts was to signal the intention to get rid of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs). They were seen as the embodiment of Labour's centralising, top-down approach. In their stead we were to enter a new era of localism. Or, possibly, Localism. Spatial planning would have a much stronger bottom-up component. Local people would have a greater say in shaping the way their area developed, including levels of new housing construction locally. The rhetoric may have been of the removal of the dead hand of the State and of local people warmly embracing housebuilding ...

[IMG: Liberal Youth action day] With nominations closing on January 4th, Liberal Youth will be electing a new Chair, and several new members of the Exec team leading it forward in 2013. Thanks to the hard work and diligence of Acting Chair Harry Matthews these elections (and positions) will be online and open to all Lib Dem members who are aged 16-25, or registered students. The New Year offers an opportunity for renewal and a new direction for our youth wing, but equally there is a risk of simply "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic". A number of us have ...

A few years ago, I went to a recording of Mark Thomas' "Manifesto" radio show. Members of the audience can suggest humorous changes to the law and society that they would like to see enacted, and the rest of the audience votes on whether they're good enough - or funny enough - to be in a proposed election manifesto. My manifesto suggestion was very simple - every time you visit an MP, it should cost you £5 or £10. If you want to go and speak to your MP you have to hand her a crisp new note. This has ...

[IMG: street lights at night] Having ignored the Lib Dems' sensible advice to delay the start of the new street lights switch off regime until a less sensitive time of the year, WCC Tories are in disarray as they try to respond to events and public pressure. Policy changes are being made "on the hoof", and press announcements being put out only to be contradicted hours later. They're trying to claim credit for responding speedily to public concerns now, but I call it a shambles! The latest example is a decision to put back the switch-off time period to 1.00 ...

Solo Blog: Peter Black, a Lib Dem Welsh assembly member. Peter is a great Lib Dem news aggregator, with a slant towards Wales and away from the Westminster Bubble, which can only be a good thing IMHO. Group Blog: Classic Who Facts, all of which are totally true and not made up at all. Twitterer: @historyweird - hilarious historical facts/news stories. Podcast: Clarkesworld - science fiction, fantasy and horror stories three times a month. The host has a voice that doesn't grate on my ears, and the diverse mix of authors they feature is fantastic, lots of women and PoC. ...

Over at the CentreForum blog, the liberal think-tank's associate director, Richard Reeves, takes a look at the "communitarian dream" that is Christmas through a liberal lens: Christmas combines in one package a number of elements that make us bristle. Religion, especially of an organised variety. Tradition for the sake of itself. The insanity of present buying. And semi-tyrannical familial expectations. ... One liberal reaction to all this is to simply grin and bear it. ... But bristling and bearing won't really do. Liberal hostility to faith, family, community and tradition is well founded; they can all inhibit individual freedom. But ...

This article is from Ashley Wilkes, reacting to the recent debate on Drugs Policy. So recently, Nick Clegg and Julian Huppert called for a royal commission on drugs reform in the UK. It is clear to see that the current drug policy just is not working. The results of the current policy are that drug ...

That man is Peter Phillips, who writes: [IMG: Peter Phillips and colleagues] I have (to date) recruited 104 'subscribers' - 65 members and 39 donors - virtually all of them are within the branch are of Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, which now has 92 members... My key message? The main impediment is Yourself! Just resolve to DO IT! Once you have knocked on the first few doors,you will be full of confidence—and success! Read more about Peter's experiences and successes over on his blog. Hat-tip: Jonathan Calder

apparently Gimli was the equivalent of 14 during the happenings of The Hobbit 3 3 3 GIMLI LOVE!!!! (tags: ) He has suffered losses before... Minor spoilers for Who Xmas special; linking because it remembers Peri as well as Adric. (tags: ) There's no such thing as free choice, so why single out sex workers? « Another angry woman (tags: ) How Batgirl Stole Christmas Perfectly Pitched Steph Brown Batgirl story: "This was probably the worst attack on a Gotham facility since the Condiment King discovered he was allergic to dairy and soy." - thye end made me fill up ...

List the places where you spent a night away from home this year, marking places where you spent two or more non-consecutive nightswith an asterisk. *Strasbourg, France *Tbilisi, Georgia *Geneva, Switzerland Skopje, Macedonia *Barcelona, Catalonia Heathrow, England *Loughbrickland, Northern Ireland Paris, France The Hague, the Netherlands Broadstairs, England Portslade, England Kidderminster, England Letchworth, England Dublin, Ireland New York, NY Cherry Hill, NJ At 16, that's more than last year but less than some others. There were a lot of return visits - five to Tbilisi, three to Strasbourg, three to Geneva. Also one overnight flight and two night ferries. Nine ...

The last twelve months have been lit up by moments that will stay with us forever. When Mo Farah approached the final stretch of the 10,000m final, who wasn't up on their feet, screaming at the TV? When Nicola Adams beamed at the crowd after winning the first ever women's Olympic boxing, who didn't smile back? I was lucky enough to be there, and that's one I'll never forget. Was there anything more British than that drenched choir in the Jubilee River Pageant, singing Rule Britannia! in the pouring rain? Incredible images. Spectacular shows. Jaw-dropping personal triumphs. And, above all, ...

[IMG: Olympic Boxing Gold Medal Winner Nicola Adams (Picture taken for GOC by David Poultney)] Nicola Adams' Gold: A Moment To Remember for 2012 The last twelve months have been lit up by moments that will stay with us forever. When Mo Farah approached the final stretch of the 10,000m final, who wasn't up on their feet, screaming at the TV? When Nicola Adams beamed at the crowd after winning the first ever women's Olympic boxing, who didn't smile back? I was lucky enough to be there, and that's one I'll never forget. Was there anything more British than that ...

[IMG: Olympic Boxing Gold Medal Winner Nicola Adams (Picture taken for GOC by David Poultney)] Nicola Adams' Gold: A Moment To Remember for 2012 The last twelve months have been lit up by moments that will stay with us forever. When Mo Farah approached the final stretch of the 10,000m final, who wasn't up on their feet, screaming at the TV? When Nicola Adams beamed at the crowd after winning the first ever women's Olympic boxing, who didn't smile back? I was lucky enough to be there, and that's one I'll never forget. Was there anything more British than that ...

Digital Agenda for Europe - European Commission Do you feel incentivised to complete the survey? (tags: Eu ) In an EU referendum, what does NO mean? @jonworth asks a good question. (tags: ukpolitics Eu ) FreedomWorks tea party group nearly falls apart in fight between old and new guard Tea Party a front for billionaires? Who'd have thought?! (tags: us )

There's still about 1% of it to go, but now's the time for writing reviews of the year gone by, however I will not be doing so. (If you really feel the need for one, I suggest you read Love and Garbage's). Sadly, it's not because I'm saving you entirely from it, but because I don't want to repeat myself. In about a month's time, this blog turns ten years old, and so I'm planning to do a series of posts looking back over those ten years, of which this year will be just a part. And now I've said ...

In an interview in yesterday's Guardian on Britain's role in the EU Nick Clegg is reported to use the word "leadership" eight times, along with "leading," "leading role", "major player," " major role," and "dominant role" once each. I applaud Nick's political courage and dedication to our Liberal principles in taking a positive stance so clearly on a subject which is not currently popular with the electorate, but why this obsession with leadership? Nick Clegg is a relatively young man and was presumably not, like me and those of my era, brought up to admire a map the land surface ...

Yesterday I posted some photos of Dunfermline, with the promise of some of the Monastery and Palace Ruins to come today. The Benedictine Monastery was founded by Queen (also Saint) Margaret, around 1070 and the current ruins, of the Refractory, date to the early 14th Century. Whilst David I moved his court to Edinburgh, the Palace remained significant until the 1603 Union of the Crowns when James VI moved to London; not before the last monarch to have been born in Scotland, Charles I, had been born in the town, though. Andrew

Now this is good news, the Western Mail reports on the views of a key Cabinet Minister that nothing will happen in Parliament to set in chain a repeal of the ban on hunting with dogs in England and Wales in 2013. They say that Environment Secretary Owen Paterson does not think he could win such a vote. Mr Paterson, a keen supporter of country sports including hunting, told the Daily Telegraph: "There's only a point having a vote if you're going to win. "At the moment, it would not be my proposal to bring forward a vote we were ...

Residents have pointed out to me that two of the recycling units at the Roseangle recycling centre are missing their lids See right and below: I drew this to the attention of the City Council and have been advised: "I've passed this on to the Officer who inspects & maintains these sites & asked for the necessary repairs to be scheduled ASAP. I believe that we have just last week taken delivery of replacement bin lids."

There is a new plan to spot abuse victims. It seems that hospital professionals did not have enough information and a new database will identify children who are at risk of abuse. According to one doctor this information is long overdue. Compare that with the news before Christmas that the health minister was 'disgusted and appalled' at NHS failings in Worcestershire which included patients going hungry and thirsty. In one case an 84-year-old man starved to death in Redditch. You don't need a degree or even an A level to recognise when someone is thirsty. You don't need a great ...

The ever excellent Richard Kemp highlights a new report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies - Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2012 - which shows that income inequality is falling under the coalition. The salient passage is: Income inequality in the UK fell sharply in 2010-11. The widely-used Gini coefficient fell from 0.36 to 0.34. This is the largest one-year fall since at least 1962, returning the Gini coefficient to below its level in 1997-98. Although this reverses the increase in this measure of income inequality that occurred under the previous Labour government, it still leaves it ...